Major Outcomes: A podcast by Workpath

Welcome to our new series AMA on OKRs, this time with our CE team lead Alessia Fadda. Over the course of several videos we’ll try to:

Bust the most common OKR myths,

Answer your most pressing OKR questions and

Share the knowledge our CE team accumulated over years of living and breathing OKRs so that we all become better at achieving our outcomes, personal or professional.

In this first episode, Alessia answers the following questions:

1 - How long should an OKR cycle be?
2 - What is the difference between KPIs and OKRs?
3 - Why can’t I just break down a project’s milestones into Key Results?
4 - How do we synchronize the project, sprint and OKR rhythms?
5 - We have many different strategic artifacts. How do they affect the company's OKRs?

“I see OKRs as something that is probably overhyped. For me, however, it is most important that organizations understand the principles and the rational behind OKRs. What is really meant by that and not only the grammar but really the thinking and the value that comes by Outcomes.” - Dr. Erik Lenhard

With today’s guest Dr. Erik Lenhard we talk about the 3 dimensions of agile transformation: New structures, New ways of working and New ways of decision making. He shares why the principles of agile working are becoming even more important and why they need to be demystified. Agile transformations do not only take time and require new leadership approaches, but above all entail a cultural change.

We also discuss why it is non-negotiable to define the “WHY” for a successful transformation. Leaders need to make sure why a change is necessary, how the Outcome of the change is going to be measured and where the journey leads the organization. At the same time, not only leaders need to communicate and lead the change, but need to change their leadership styles as well. A survey conducted by BCG with over 10.000 managers states that 67% are not happy with their decision power.

Dr. Erik Lenhard is Partner and Director in the Munich Office of the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), member of the Technology Advantage and part of the leadership team for the Global and European Agile and Software business. Together with a colleague he is leading BCG's Agile at Scale business in Europe, having supported more than 25 organizations across industries in their agile journey.

He joined BCG in 2012 and has more than 15 years experience in agile methods, large scale agile transformation and major aspects related to Enterprise Agility. Prior to working at BCG, Erik was heading the Management Information Department at Kabel Deutschland and worked as Manager at Solon Management Consulting. He earned a PhD in National Economics and a Diploma in Business Computer Science from the Technical University of Darmstadt and the London School of Economics. Moreover, he is a certified Scrum Master, Product Owner, Agile Coach as well as SAFe certified.

Where to find Erik:

“The beauty of OKRs is that they engage right away the people who are responsible for executing the strategy. This outcome thinking - which is the main theme of OKRs -  is  very powerful. Basically, when we do work on our client’s strategy, we convince them to use OKRs as a strategy implementation tool”  - Frank Radeke

In today’s episode “OKRs in Strategy and Product Development” we talk about how every company became a technology company and why an outcome-based strategy - flexible and adaptive - is the right way to go. We contrast that with the “old way” of doing strategy - setting 5 year plans -  and how to build “strategic thinking” into a capability inside your organization. We also touch on how startups use OKRs but also how corporate innovation departments can use them - and Frank shares the data from a recent study they did at neoverv, where an alarmingly-low rate - only 10% of respondents, believe they are actually achieving their targets, despite 81% confirming that they do understand the company’s strategy. Finally, we discuss how OKRs are what brings strategy execution to life, in weekly discussions, and how they provide the critical link between company and product vision, priorities and daily work.

Frank is Managing Director at neoverv. At neoverv we enable organizations to  become innovation and sustainability leaders through technology. Neoverv designs and accelerates digital technology strategies, builds and scales digital products, and boosts teams for agile scalability.

Facts about Frank:

Background in business information systems (MSc. / PhD)

15 years within technology strategy and transformation consulting

8 years at Capgemini Invent as lead of IT strategy practice  in DACH

Since 2020 managing director at neoverv

Where to find Frank Radeke:

In today’s podcast, we talk with Cristina Popa on the role of leadership styles and how they facilitate or hinder transformation programs in the enterprise space. We also touch on the shifts that are needed in the current environment and in order to perform large-scale enterprise transformation projects. Finally, we  discuss the role of OKRs - as they are used in these projects and how OKRs relate to the leadership styles.

Cristina joined the consultancy consistency.de in 2015 and was the first female partner. During this intense period, she has dedicated herself to business psychology and led digitization projects in the energy transition. 

Currently, in addition to her role as partner at consistency.de, she’s also the CEO at the tech startup Contractuo - which helps companies streamline and automate their contract management processes. 

With the prevailing tiredness of digitization, Germany is making a mockery of the global economy. We should finally discard sluggishness based on our ego, ignorance or fear! This is the conclusion Cristina draws after 17 years of professional experience in numerous companies. She has identified a pattern that distinguishes successful companies from others. The most important factor here is a differentiated view of human behavior. For Cristina, psychology and digitization go hand in hand in today‘s world. Companies need to recognize their own wasteful behavior in order to use valuable energies and resources more wisely.

Where to find Christina:

“Organizations were readjusting in the past 3 years - from Covid-19 to the economic crunch. But now we are in a period when we need to start implementing. And realizing that when you’re adapting on the leadership level - how do we get people on board? How do we get them engaged? I think leaders realize that Outcome Management is key to be successful.” - Felix von Held

In today's podcast with Dr. Felix von Held we talk about robust leadership. Robust leadership highlights organizational and leadership capabilities that see change and uncertainty as opportunity and chance. 

We dig deeper into the robust leadership survey, and Felix shares that the biggest challenge to embrace change and adapt fast are oftentimes tensions. Tensions for instance between stability and agility as well as balancing strategy and culture. We discuss that specifically with regards to strategy development, this process and its implementation cannot happen without proper change management. Leaders need to thus enhance skills that combine providing strategy and stability while also balancing out a participative approach and opportunities to adapt quickly. 

We conclude that these skills are vital in the context of thinking in outcomes. If we plan and execute on outcomes, we need to be able to adapt quickly without losing our culture and employees while doing so.

Dr. Felix von Held is one of the founders of the Institute for Innovation and Change Methodology (IICM) in Munich. In his work as a consultant and coach, he focuses on innovation and leadership in the context of transformation in the fields of digitalization, sustainability and new work.

In the last 14 years, he has worked globally in more than 10 industries and over 100 innovation and transformation projects. Before founding the IICM, Felix worked in innovation management and strategic change management at the BMW Group.

Since 2008, he has been teaching at the Center of Digital Technology Management in Munich as well as at the ESB in Reutlingen and the University of Zurich. In his doctoral thesis at the Chair of Entrepreneurship and Pedagogy at the University of Regensburg, Dr. Felix von Held focused on the topic of "Collective Creativity" as part of organizational learning.

Where to find Dr. Felix von Held:

In unserer heutigen Episode sprechen wir mit Dr. Maximilian Lude über Familienunternehmen und den deutschen Mittelstand. Er teilt, warum seine Doktorarbeit das Interesse an Familienunternehmen geweckt hat und seine größte Erkenntnis:  Familienunternehmen werden in der Öffentlichkeit anders wahrgenommen.

Ebenso beleuchten wir, wie sich familiengeführte Unternehmen von Konzernen unterscheiden, deren Vor-und Nachteile und was es mit der Enkelfähigkeit auf sich hat.

Maximilian gibt außerdem Einblicke, wie Familienunternehmen ihre strategische Steuerung verbessern können und wie Outcome Management integriert werden kann. Und warum es durch zunehmenden Innovationsdruck sowie ständige Marktveränderungen gerade jetzt wichtig ist, die Verlagerung hin zu Outcomes in Betracht zu ziehen.

Abschließend sprechen wir darüber, wie es der Weisse Arena gelungen ist, Outcome Management und OKRs erfolgreich einzuführen und wie sich so Zombie Ideen aufdecken lassen.

____________________

Dr. Maximilian Lude ist Geschäftsführer und Mitgründer von Philoneos, einer strategischen Unternehmensberatung für Familienunternehmen, die sich auf Innovation, Transformation und die Zukunft der Arbeit konzentriert.

Er engagiert sich auch in der akademischen Welt und ist Gastprofessor und Dozent an der Polytechnischen Universität Mailand sowie an der Zeppelin Universität Friedrichshafen.

Seine Leidenschaft gilt inspirierenden Marken, Kultgeschichten und unabhängigen Familienunternehmen. Er ist Forscher, Innovationsagent, Redner und Gründer und immer interessiert an  neuen Trends, Technologien und Geschäftsideen.

____________________

Hier findest du Max:

In today’s podcast, we talk with Niels Rasmussen about outcome-based thinking and participative strategy development - a method of involving a large part of the organization coming together and creating and implementing the strategy - that’s gaining more and more ground.

This method comes to address rising problems that result in over 70% of all strategies not coming to fruition, problems fuelled by demographic changes, the pace of changes and the need for enterprise transformation.

We also talk about why it is so challenging to move toward participative strategy development and what it takes to make it happen. One is culture and the second one is our lack of belief in a true ownership culture. 

We touch on how the OKR framework is a key factor to getting participative strategy development off the ground. 

Lastly, we discuss briefly about the 12 steps required to execute a shift towards participative strategy development, which will appear in an article co-authored by Niels in spring 2023.

Niels Rasmussen is founder and Managing Partner at +RASMUSSEN, a consultancy and executive training academy focusing on helping senior leaders and business owners grow their business and their leadership capabilities in areas such as Vision, Strategy, Structure, Role & Responsibility Development and Implementation.

Niels has more than 25 years of top management and consulting experience in Germany, Australia, Denmark and USA (Managing Director Hewitt Associates in Germany & Europe CEO, Equity Partner KPMG), as well as diplomatic experience - serving as Commercial Affairs Officer with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark. 

Passionately Danish, he’s engaged to serve as Copenhagen Goodwill Ambassador - following his 2014 appointment by HRH Prince Joachim of Denmark.

Lastly, loving all things Danish - from a distinctive culture centered on lack of hierarchies and easy communication at all levels - as well as anything design-related (including Organizational Design), he’s trying to bring this approach in the consultancy he founded: + RASMUSSEN.

At +RASMUSSEN he leads a team of talented people who drive meaningful transformation work at global Fortune 500’s (Allianz, Daimler, Merck, Valeo, Continental) as well as public and semi-public organisations such as GasNetz Hamburg, the city of Freiburg and pronova.

Where to find Niels:

Marie-Luise Lehmann is an executive with over 15 years of experience in the fields of finance and agile transformation. Currently, she’s Chief of Staff to the Deloitte Consulting Germany and EMEA CEO and COO as well as Office Lead for the CxO and Agile Finance Lead.

Welcome back to Superkinetics!

In todays episode, we are talking to Ana Pacios Escudero and Philipp Schoel from Workpath about mastering change.

In our fast changing working environment, it is hard to keep up, and you have to find ways to adapt to those changes. Our guests will tell us how to adapt to this change, and how to use your data to make the right decisions.

Further resources:

Welcome back to Superkinetics!

In todays episode, we are talking to Workpath's Product Lead Simon Bock. You might already know him, as he has been in our Podcast before in some episodes.

Simon is giving us some insights into the topic of outcome execution. We are talking about productivity killers, focus, and routines that influence our ability to reach our outcome oriented goals.

Further resources:

Welcome back to Superkinetics.

In today's episode we are focussing on the second problem we introduced in episode 1 of this season. We talk about alignment - the advantages that arise with good alignment, and the problems that arise when it is missing. To discuss this topic we invited Isabell Stahl , Product Manager at Workpath.

Here you can find the separate sections of the interview:

(02:49) What does alignment mean for a company?
(06:37) Why does alignment get increasingly difficult?
(09:26) What does good alignment look like?
(13:46) How to improve your alignment

Further resources:

Welcome back to Superkinetics!

Today's guests are Katharina Ortkrass and Constantin Möckelmann from Hella - one of the world's largest automotive suppliers. They are leading the transformation process in their company and will give us some insights into their work. 

To continue the topic of our last episode, we will keep talking about the concept of clear outcomes and talk about the challenges and chances that come with this topic.

Here you can find the separate sections of the interview:

(03:31) The state of the automotive industry.
(05:44) What were your expectations when you started your transformation?
(06:35) How do you support your teams to phrase outcomes right?
(10:01) How to communicate your outcomes?
(11:18) How to structure your process?
(13:06) What changed since your OKR implementation?
(15:53) What have been the biggest obstacles on your way?
(18:47) What is your next big milestone?
(20:55) What advice can you give for the implementation of an outcome management framework?

Welcome to our latest episode of the Superkinetics Podcast.

Welcome back to Superkinetics.

Welcome back to Superkinetics!

Today's guest is Patrik Olofsson.
Some of you might already know him as he was a speaker at our Workpath Quarterly in June and also as a guest at our OKR Forum in Amsterdam.
He is a certified Scrum Master, and he is Chapter Lead and Vice President, leading the Agile Coaches at INGKA which is a part of the IKEA Group.

Patrik started his career as a developer and architect but over the last 20 years, his passion transitioned to agile transformations, continuous improvement in orgs, and coaching.
He provides new approaches and new ways of working that have brought increased efficiency and profitability to the companies he worked with.

Today we’ll talk about organizational change, OKRs and particularly about scaling and the challenges that arise with it.

(02:38) How do you start a transformational process?
(07:41) Who should start with the transformation?
(09:43) What is the perfect adoption process for a team?
(13:56) OKRs as an analytics framework.
(18:37) What are the most important roles to make OKRs work?
(21:48) What are the most important building blocks for an "OKR Playbook"?
(25:17) How can you facilitate help to teams?
(27:24) Why is it so difficult to think in outcomes?
(32:08) Our three standard questions

Welcome to our latest episode of the Superkinetics Podcast.

Welcome to our latest episode of the Superkinetics Podcast.

Welcome to our latest episode of the Superkinetics Podcast. 

Welcome to the latest episode of our Superkinetics Podcast.

Welcome to our latest episode of the Superkinetics Podcast.

In this episode, we are excited to present you a case study with our guest Jelmer Koekkoek, who is joining our podcast for the second time.
He is a Lead "Agilist" and Scrum Master at Knab, the first online bank without local branches in the Netherlands.
Before that, he used to be an Agile Coach at ING Netherlands for more than three years and focused on practices such as Scrum or Kanban, business agility, leadership and the transformation process.
During our interview with Jelmer, we are mainly focusing on practices used at Knab and some of the challenges they had to overcome.

Here you can find the separate sections of this interview:

(02:59) Knab's approach to the implementation of OKRs
(08:41) Does a regulated working environment allow OKRs
(18:26) learning
(21:35) How management buy-in made Knab's transformation a successful one
(23:51) OBEYA: A brief overview and how Knab combines it with OKRs
(27:55) Our three favourite questions on role models, inspirational quotes, and books

People referred to:

Welcome back!

This is the second and last part of our OKR Forum 2020 Special. Once Again, we have prepared an alternative set up. This time we interviewed two speakers individually for just 15 minutes, asking them about their part in the forum, their experiences with OKRs, and their individual success stories. 

Who did we invite this time? 

Welcome to this out-of-schedule episode of our Superkinetics Podcast. 

Workpath was one of the hosts of the OKR Forum 2020 in Amsterdam, the biggest OKR Forum in Europe. Following up on this event, we wanted to share some of the discussed topics with our listeners and give you the opportunity to get some exclusive insights on the topics presented and discussed at the forum. 

In this first part of our OKR Forum Special, we invited three guests to discuss their opinion on the OKR Forum as well as these topics: 

Now, who exactly did we discuss these topics with? 

We have something unexpected to share with you!

Our CEO and Founder Johannes Müller was invited to speak on another podcast that focuses on OKRs and OKR implementation.

For this new episode, we are going on an international trip to take a closer look at WeTransfer's OKR journey. 

We invited Tom Goulooze - Team Coach and Facilitator at WeTransfer -  to talk about the first and second OKR introduction at WeTransfer, a Dutch file transfer service firm. Their initial OKR implementation posed a great challenge nonetheless, they then decided to reinvent their process and deal with all difficulties. In 2020 they dared a second launch. 

During this detailed and insightful "case study", you will hear a lot of different examples on how to deal with initial disappointment and how to challenge failed endeavors the right way. We are tackling topics like measuring the ROI of the OKR program, accountability, management buy-in, and how Tom established useful company rituals at WeTransfer.

Tom's book recommendations: 

Als Direktor des Center for Corporate Innovation am SGMI Management Institute St. Gallen, CEO der Unternehmensberatung Venture Idea, Bestsellerautor und Keynote-Speaker gilt Lucas Sauberschwarz als einer der führenden Experten in den Bereichen Strategie, Innovation und New Work. In seinen Keynote-Referaten begeistert er sein Publikum mit seinen Erfahrungen aus der Zusammenarbeit mit mehr als der Hälfte der DAX-Unternehmen und dem Mittelstand in über 60 Projekten in mehr als 20 Branchen.

Für ihre Forschungs- und Beratungsarbeit zeichnete die WirtschaftsWoche Lucas Sauberschwarz und Venture Idea als "Best of Consulting 2018" in der Kategorie "Innovation & Wachstum" aus. Im Jahr 2019 gewann Sauberschwarz den "Best of Consulting 2019"-Award in der Kategorie "Strategie", gefolgt von der Nominierung "Best Consultants in Germany 2020" durch das BrandEins Magazin und die Statistikplattform statista.

Welcome to the second episode of "You Ask, We Answer",  the new category of the Superkinetics podcast. In this series, we gather your questions from the Workpath Community and invite experts to answer them. In this episode, we talk to Simon Bock, Head of Customer Success at Workpath and answer the following questions:

02:50: Why do we need a dedicated team driving the introduction, the scaling, and the continuous development of this new process?

08:30: How does a successful team look like when the organization sets out to establish OKRs? What kind of roles do you need and what kind of people do you cast for these roles?

14:30: What is important when starting and building a community of OKR Coaches? 

20:05: How can Program Leads and OKR Coaches assess if they are on the right track with the OKR rollout?

In dieser Folge ist Nadine Schmidt, Gründerin von HEJMO Consulting, zu Gast bei Superkinetics. Freue dich auf eine frische Perspektive der Strategiearbeit und erfahre, warum Nadine nicht an Steuerung glaubt.

Im Superkinetics Podcast dieser Woche sprechen wir mit Dr. Hans-Joachim Gergs, promovierter Soziologe und Gründer der Gesellschaft für empirische Organisationsforschung. In diesem Gespräch reden wir über die Prinzipien für ambidextre Führung, warum Unternehmen weiterhin Hierarchien brauchen und was man von James Bond und vom Taoismus lernen kann.

In der neuen Folge des Podcasts haben wir mit Marco Alberti über die Herausforderungen beim Einsatz von OKRs gesprochen und darüber, wie deren Wirkung im Unternehmen gezielt gemessen werden kann.

Heute zu Gast bei Superkinetics: Mathias Gorf berät bei der HolidayCheck AG den CTO/CPO bei der Schaffung eines agilen "Produkt-Entwicklungs"-Unternehmens. Als echter Praktiker ist Mathias für die Verbesserungen des OKR-Prozesses bei HolidayCheck zuständig. Außerdem leitet er die ScrumMaster der vier Standorte in Europa und hilft ihnen dabei, als starkes Team zusammenzuarbeiten. In diesem Gespräch erfährst du über die Prozesse, die HolidayCheck Group AG zu einem erfolgreichen, agilen Unternehmen machen.

Diese Woche zu Gast bei Superkinetics: Prof. Dr. Armin Trost! Er gilt seit vielen Jahren als einer der bekanntesten und führenden Vordenker im Personalmanagement. Armin lehrt und forscht seit 2005 an der Business School der Hochschule Furtwangen. Aktuell beschäftigt er sich mit Fragen der Führung und Organisation im Kontext der Digitalisierung. Bei der SAP war er mehrere Jahre weltweit für Recruiting verantwortlich. Seit vielen Jahren berät er erfolgreich Unternehmen unterschiedlichster Größen und Branchen in strategischen Fragen des Human Resource Management. 

In dieser Folge ist Dr. Daniela Kudernatsch zu Gast bei Superkinetics. Dr. Kudernatsch ist Beraterin, und ihre Expertise liegt vor allem in der unternehmensweiten und cross-funktionalen Strategieentwicklung und -umsetzung – mit verschiedenen Managementsystemen und -tools auf die sie sich spezialisiert hat. In diesem Gespräch sprechen wir über Balanced Scorecard (BSC), über ihr Steckenpferd Hoshin Kanri (Policy Deployment) sowie über die aktuell sehr gefragte Steuerungsmethode Objectives und Key Results (OKRs).

Im Superkinetics Podcast dieser Woche sprechen wir mit Nikolai Ladanyi, CEO von Scale Up. Nikolai Ladanyi engagiert sich leidenschaftlich für die Entwicklung von Unternehmen und ist Mitglied der Entrepreneurs' Organization. Außerdem ist Nikolai  der Herausgeber der deutschen Ausgabe von Verne Harnish’s Bestseller "Rockefeller Habits" und "Scaling Up". In diesem Gespräch unterhalten wir uns über die vier Säulen von Scale Up und über die Frage: "Was ist Strategie und wie findet man die Balance zwischen Strategie und Execution".

Im Superkinetics Podcast dieser Woche sprechen wir mit Dr. Eike Wagner, CEO von emergize. emergize ist eine der führenden Change Beratungen im deutschsprachigen Raum. Eike hat in Oxford zu “Effektivem Change” promoviert und ist inzwischen wieder Dozent zu diesem Thema. In diesem Gespräch, sprechen wir über den Unterschied zwischen “Effektivem Change vs. Old Change”, und über die große Frage, ob Change in Unternehmen die neue Konstante ist.

Dr. Eike Wagner

In dieser Folge ist Dr. Marcus Raitner (Agile Transformation Agent @BMW Group IT) zu Gast bei Superkinetics. Freue dich auf spannende Einblicke in die Transformation der BMW Group IT hin zu dem Ziel "100% agil". Marcus hat seit 2010 auch einen Blog mit dem Namen "Führung erfahren" und ist der Autor vom "Manifest für menschliche Führung": Sechs Thesen für neue Führung im Zeitalter: https://amzn.to/2PLkLRD

Folge 002: In dieser Folge ist Conny Dethloff zu Gast bei Superkinetics. Freue dich auf spannende Einblicke in seine Rolle als „Mensch im Agile Center der Otto Group”, in der er Teams und Organisationen hilft, Arbeitsweisen und Kultur zukunftsfähiger zu machen.